Traditional surgical procedures for pathologies located within the body can cause significant trauma to the intervening tissues. These procedures often require a long incision, extensive muscle stripping, prolonged retraction of tissues, denervation and/or devascularization of tissue. These procedures can also require lengthy operating room times and several weeks of post-operative recovery time due to damage and/or destruction of tissue resulting from the surgical procedure. In some cases, these invasive procedures may lead to permanent scarring and prolonged pain that can be more severe than the pain leading to the surgical intervention.
The development of percutaneous procedures has yielded significant improvements in reducing recovery time and post-operative pain because of minimization of the dissection of tissue. For example, minimally invasive surgical techniques are desirable for spinal and neurosurgical applications because of the need for access to locations within the body and the danger of damage to vital intervening tissues. While developments in minimally invasive surgery are steps in the right direction, there remains a need for further development of instrumentation for retracting tissue in a minimally invasive manner.